Kelly Grace Thomas

Tonight I walk in an orchardof low gods.Prayers rot just beyondfingertip preach.

I climb the trees bowheadedin hush. I sweat silentScripturewant.

I want this bodyto do what history oathed.

After the bloodwork,I church my voice.I altar my lips.

Force faith to be the only alphabetI vowel.

Lately every pleaseI pockethas lungs

tinier than mine.

STORM WARNING

She told me: pain needs a witness knowing, once or twice, the fruit of me has been peeled.

Under this dress: eggs and arms. A one-eyed doll: births and breaks.

I live under shell cracked sky sleep with undecided bones.

Female: a storm I first noticed in the clouds. It has taken all of me

to rain this hard.

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Kelly Grace Thomas is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Kelly was also a 2016 Fellow for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Nashville Review, The Boiler, Sixth Finch, Muzzle, Rattle, PANK and more. Kelly’s chapbook, Zersetzung, was a finalist for the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press. Kelly works to bring poetry to underserved youth as the Manager of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit-Words Ignite. She lives in Los Angeles and is working on her debut novel Only 10,001. For more of her work, visitwww.kellygracethomas.com